The LMDE Update Pack 3 is currently being tested and features the new Linux 3.0 kernel. Reports so far are promising and no significant regressions have been observed. The stable release of LMDE should come out early this month. The feedback we gathered from the RC was extremely positive and allowed us to fix important bugs and to bring additional improvements. Some of the most notable issues in the RC were related to the installer, its handling of fstab, mounting of partitions and creation of partition tables on empty hard drives, this is all being addressed at the moment. Developers and people interested in the code can follow its development on Github. A network of mirrors was started for the Latest Debian Repository. This repository is currently hosted in Denver, USA and mirrored in Romania and Australia. R&D started on Gnome 3. Although the new desktop is extremely different than what we’re aiming for, it looks extremely promising from a technical point of view and easy to modify and improve upon. We’re planning to do some R&D on Gnome 2 as well in order to assess the work involved in maintaining it within Linux Mint. Of course, all you probably want to know is whether Mint 12 will come with Gnome 3, Gnome 2 or something else.. and I’m afraid you’ll need to wait a little more before we can tell you for sure. At this stage it might go either way, or it’s possible we might support both versions of Gnome going forward. We’re aware of what the community wants, we’ve got a precise idea of what we want to achieve, and based on the technicalities, and confidence we have in these two technologies, not only now, but for the future, we’ll take our time and make the right decision. Many improvements were made to the Community Website. It’s faster than before, it takes less resources on the server, it now shows more statistics and it lets you follow the evolution of tutorials and ideas and see when the team reviews them. There’s a graphical breakdown of tutorials, devices, ideas, according to their format, status, brand and other criterias to give users a better overall idea of what is going on. The most significant changes are not visible though… all forum moderators were also promoted to community moderators and their rights were changed to let them review tutorials, process ideas and rebrand/recategorize hardware devices. As a result, hardware devices will be easier to find, tutorials will be reviewed faster, ideas processed more often and their author will get a better follow-up. Proxima Centauri was promoted to Forums and Community Administrator. In South Dakota, USA, Aspire High School migrated all their computers to Linux Mint. We’re currently in talks with a computer company whose name everybody knows and we’re very excited about a possible partnership with them (and before you ask, no, it is NOT Apple or Microsoft). Talks are ongoing at the moment. The Summer months are usually relatively quiet, but August was a surprise for us, with our daily income going up 40%. This income is largely generated by the community, the donations and the traffic (in terms of advertising) it represents. It varies according to the level of support we get from our users, the size of our user base and the health of the advertising markets. Such a result is outstanding and extremely motivating for us, and the fact that it came in August was simply fantastic. I’d like to thank all the people who support us directly (via donations and sponsorships) or indirectly (via search queries, traffic, promotion) and who participate in making Linux Mint as successful as it is today.

I do love Gnome2 bar, with system monitor and apps on it.But Would be possible a Gnome3 with Gnome2 config capabilities?Or A Gnome3 + Gnome2 where I can choose on splash screen what to use and fast switch from one to another.Cheap ATOM based computers would run perfect with LMDE PREINSTALLED, as it goes with Chrome OS or Meego.Preconfigured looks as other OSs guis as Zorin has are a very interesting tool.Wine and Arista - Mencoder - should be included in main distro - I think -And of course PPA support trick - I already have it -, with WIne, Chrome, and Opera repos - last two not open source, but useful.Last but not least, VLC as default video player as an option - now is not possible to make it work as default audio/video player.